Apple is already planning the next iPad Mini, according to sources. The word is that the company will be looking to go even lighter and thinner with the iPad next time around. The new model could come as early as mid-next year.

Apple is down to just LG to supply the screens for the iPad Mini and has been hurt by Samsung and Apple no longer doing. Having Samsung as well as LG to supply screens for the iPad Mini would have the best case for Apple, but unfortunately this is not happening.

Also, with the release of the new iPad Mini, the days for Apple’s iPod Touch could be short. Although Apple just gave the Touch a much needed makeover and added some new features, with the iPad Mini having a price point starting at just $329, there really is little room for the Touch in Apple’s lineup. Look for Apple to start winding the Touch down after Christmas.

Steve Jobs' annointed successor Tim Cook will get a massive financial windfall in his new role as Apple CEO. However the terms of his bonus package are a bit odd. He has been given a nine-figure bonus package to handcuff him to the company for a jolly long time.

Apple has given Cook a million shares of restricted stock as he takes over the reins of the company from Steve Jobs. At current prices, the stock package is worth more than $US383 million ($366 million).

But apparently he will not get it all for at least ten years. Half of the award vests over five years, and the other half five years after that.

What Apple seem to want is for Cook to be as loyal as Steve was to the outfit. However it is unusual for a company to say that it will stick to its CEO even if he is crap for a decade. Meanwhile the tame Apple Press continues to talk up Apple's share price claiming that it will be hit $477 next year and talking about which small country Cook could buy.

But others are more sceptical saying that Cook will need to do more than just bring out a thinner iPad or iPhone to truly match former chief executive and co-founder Steve Jobs's visionary qualities. Still, St. Peter had the same problem following up Jesus. He lost a lot of ground to St. Paul and was eventually replaced.

Nintendo has broken the dreadful silence on the ultimate question of whether there’s life beyond the Wii by announcing that the company is currently working on it. Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata told investors that Nintendo is currently “studying and developing the next console to Wii,” but that’s pretty much all the info he had to offer.

Iwata underlined that there’s a huge difference between developing a product and announcing what it is and/or when it will be released, so you probably shouldn’t expect news anytime soon. He added that the secretive approach should be viewed as the means to protect the company from pirated ideas and how “the history of entertainment is also the history of imitation. A great idea will promptly be copied unless protected through patents.”

Furthermore, Nintendo wants to keep a lid on things until everything is ready to surprise people, and Iwata argues that people simply will not be surprised by a complete product if you announce just how surprising it is three years in advance. Fair point, we must admit.

This disclose-any-info-as-late-as-possible routine seems to be the company’s favorite way of doing things, and no wonder since it’s obviously doing pretty well. With this in mind, Iwata doesn’t plan on changing things and while the total amount of company’s grey matter is actively working on solutions for immediate future and beyond, they’re not quite prepared to divulge any info on it.

In case you were wondering about the future of optical storage after Blu-ray, including its handover to alternative flash-based formats, Sony has a statement particularly geared towards those wide-eyed cynics and pessimists from every corner of the Internet – by no means does the optical storage format plan to die anytime soon.

Even as Blu-ray continues to experience growing pains in a market overwhelmed with DVDs, a new report from the Examiner states that Sony is working in conjunction with Japanese researchers from Tohoku University to develop a next-generation “blu-violet ultrafast pulsed semiconductor laser” that will be able to store 1TB of data on a single optical disc.

The optical technology uses a new type of blue-violet laser that can generate pulses measuring in picoseconds, or one-trillionth of a second. In addition, the new semiconductor laser and semiconductor optical amplifier allow the output power to top 100 watts, or more than one hundred times the output of conventional pulse semiconductor lasers.

From the press release:

“This latest successful development is an all-semiconductor laser picosecond pulse source with a laser wavelength of 405 nanometers (same wavelength as Blu-ray) in the blue-violet region. It is capable of generating optical pulses in the ultrafast duration of 3 picoseconds (1 picosecond = one-trillionth of a second), with ultrahigh output peak power of 100 watts and repetition frequency of 1 gigahertz. Advanced control of the newly-developed and proprietarily-constructed GaN-based mode-locked semiconductor laser and semiconductor optical amplifier have enabled peak output power in excess of 100 watts to be achieved, which is more than a hundred times the world’s highest output value for conventional blue-violet pulse semiconductor lasers.”

The two institutions noted that their system eliminated the need for a “bulky” light source and “specialist technician” to run previous lasers with similar qualities. “There are high expectations that this newly-developed semiconductor laser system, which incorporates semiconductor diodes, will be able to be used in a much wider range of applications in the future thanks to technology such as this, which enables the size of devices such as the light source box to be drastically reduced.”

Ryan Fleming from DigitalTrends notes that the battle for next generation optical storage is well underway, and it will be fierce. In April, the Blu-ray Disc Association released a press statement highlighting new format enhancements of the Blu-ray technology, including discs that could store up to 128GB. Less than a month later, researchers at the University of Tokyo claimed to have discovered a new, cheap and easily created material that could store up to 25TB on a single disc. The new 1TB format, in comparison, is expected to hold the equivalent of 106 dual-layer DVDs on a single disc.

Japanese news sources have also gone on record to give more quantified values to the laser announcement. The Daily Yomiuri Online wrote that the new optical format is expected to allow 20 times the storage capacity of a single layer Blu-ray disc. This makes sense, as a single layer Blu-ray disc holds roughly 25GB of data. The real question to ask in the near future will be in regards to the type of content distributed on the new optical format, and whether it will include any sort of “DRM-like” restrictions. Let’s just hope Sony has learned wisely from its past mistakes in digital content protection before the consumer electronics industry unleashes 4K (Quad-HD) video content to the masses.